


all strange wonders

by mongrelmind



Category: Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Book HMC canon, M/M, wei ying please stop giving away your secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25717903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mongrelmind/pseuds/mongrelmind
Summary: In which Lan Wangji gets cursed, falls in love with a demonic cultivator, saves the world, and starts a family (hopefully not in that order) all the while trying to avoid expressing his feelings with weed killer.Or, Lan Wangji makes for an excellent Sophie, although he doesn't get to make any hats.
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Comments: 21
Kudos: 74
Collections: Mó Dào Zǔ Shī | The Untamed Kink Meme 2020





	all strange wonders

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [asphodelflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asphodelflame/pseuds/asphodelflame) in the [mo_dao_zu_shi_kink_meme_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/mo_dao_zu_shi_kink_meme_2020) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> howl's moving castle au!!
> 
> \+ where the fearsome yiling patriarch is a mystery only known for his use of dark magic and followed by whispers and rumors of him kidnapping or killing people (reason can be up to the filler! maybe rumors say its to absorb their power? maybe they dont think he has a real reason? maybe they think he's just Evil™?)
> 
> \+ all i Really Request is wen ning and wen qing and maybe even lil a-yuan living with wwx in his castle and they have that Family Vibe™ 
> 
> \+ maybe wen ning is like calcifer saved by wwx! and a-yuan is like markle and an apprentice! wen qing could be his exasperated older sister-esque assistant who immediately susses out lan zhan when he shows up and convinces him to break the curse! i leave the details of their characters and respective abilities up to u!!
> 
> \+ filler can decide whether they want to follow the canon storyline or not and if they prefer the ghibli movie or the novel! 
> 
> optional Thought™: if novel maybe wwx ran away from the real world after smth happened with the jiangs?
> 
> background ships are welcome!!! 
> 
> **DNW** : explicit smut (if any at all-), major character death, gore
> 
> De-anon please!!
> 
> I hope you like what I have so far! This was actually the very first thing I started writing for this fandom and your prompt inspired me to continue/finish it and actually post it! Not a lot of moving castle family vibe in this chapter but I can promise you there will be plenty in the following chapters! 
> 
> Working title for this fic was _Hot, Heartless, and Hollow_ , sorry for changing it for something vastly inferior Erin!
> 
> Thanks to Erin for the beta, and to the usual suspects for all the yelling about this over the months.

In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really do exist, it is the greatest misfortune to be born the eldest of three. That was not the case in Gusu, where they proudly used talismans for their transportation and invisibility spells. There, the greatest misfortune was apparently being born Lan Wangji, who was once called the Second Jade of Gusu, and would now be called nothing except, perhaps, ‘old man’.

He was making his way down the mountain from Cloud Recesses more slowly than he was used to, every step revealing yet another creaking joint or dull ache down his back. Old age was a novel sensation, but not, Lan Wangji had to admit, a very pleasant one. He was not a stranger to bodily discomfort, by any means; there was no one in Cloud Recesses who hadn’t spent hours kneeling in front of the hanshi in punishment for some broken rule or other failing, and he was no exception. This was different. His body was too soft. Alien. Unfamiliar. Weak. He was annoyed at his slow, plodding progress, but traveling by sword was not an option; not until he was sure this new body would survive it. And however much it galled him to think it, he didn't have any plans about where to go exactly. Not when he was weak like this, when he didn't know how he came to be in this position. It only mattered that he left Cloud Recesses behind, so that if whoever cursed him sought to finish the job they’d have no reason to search for him there. 

Soon – too soon, he thought, with a flare of frustration – he needed to stop. What had started as a small ache in his back had grown distracting, all-encompassing. He tried to straighten up and stretch and found he couldn’t. His spiritual energy, when he tried to direct some to the centre of the sensation, was a feeble, weak breeze of relief that was all too quickly buried under the pain again. He sat in the shadow of a tree and tried to remember how to breathe.

_ In his dream, he was still young and walking to the Cloud Recesses library. _

_ There was a noise, a bitten off curse-word, a ripple in the stillness. _

_ There was a door that was not supposed to be there, stairs, disappearing underground. _

_ Someone saw and laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. Too sharp, too empty. He recognised its sound, had heard it before from the mouth of -- _

Lan Wangji opened his eyes, his heart beating so loudly that it echoed in his head, a sheen of sweat on his skin. There was a name, a face that he should have been able to remember. Someone had attacked him that day in the library and, apparently, they hadn’t been satisfied with cursing him into this old and alien body. There was a haze around his thoughts, heavier than the mist around Cloud Recesses. It worried him, even more than his aching joints and trembling hands. Still, Lan Wangji was nothing if not determined. 

When he was uncursed, unspoiled,  _ young _ , not even a full day previously, he had been known for his skill during night hunts, his ability to track down a spirit, to suss out the root of a haunting or curse. There was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to find who’d done this to him. No reason why he couldn’t find a way to break this spell and get back to his life. Until then, well, how hard could being old be? Normal people managed it.

*

Being old was  _ not  _ easy.

Lan Wangji had walked the mountains of Gusu all his life, in various states of health, but it had never been like this. Even the weather was against him, the cold, wet mist seeping through his robes like tiny papercuts all over his body. His eyesight was still keen, which was, he had to admit, a blessing, but his limbs shook in a way they never did when he was young, and before long he had to use Bichen as a walking stick, leaning heavily against it in a way that a far off corner of his brain recognized as not good for the blade, probably. But that was a small thought, lost in the ocean that was his new awareness of his body’s fragility, its age. 

He almost didn’t hear the soft whining coming from a thorny hedge near the edge of the cliff. Almost without thinking he moved towards the sound, parting the branches and trying to ignore the pricking of the thorns on his arms. There was a small dog there, trapped into the bush, a thin strip of leather wrapped around its neck almost like a garotte. The dog saw him and started barking, thrashing around and only getting itself even more hopelessly tangled. Lan Wangji reached towards it but the dog just snapped its teeth hard in his direction, scared and lashing out wildly. He frowned and cast the silencing spell before he really considered if that would be a waste of his weakened spiritual energy. Luckily, the dog seemed shocked into silence, allowing Lan Wangji to pull him out from the hedge with minimum damage to his arms and hands. Once out the dog jumped away, crouching low to the ground and watching Lan Wangji, still scared but not attacking. 

It didn’t look like a wild dog. There were no pets allowed in Cloud Recesses, and Lan Wangji had a very limited understanding of how to interact with animals, especially when they were small and scared and licking their wounds. But, even he could recognise that it was well fed and underneath the dust and thorns its coat was shiny and smooth. It looked at Lan Wangji very intently, and its eyes seemed almost human. There was something he should be doing to soothe it, probably. 

He looked at the dog. The dog looked at him. 

It wasn’t particularly enlightening. 

Lan Wangji  _ was _ an old man, and he was on a mission of sorts, and he definitely didn’t have the time, skills, or temperament to look after this creature. 

There were no pets allowed in Cloud Recesses. However. 

Lan Wangji sighed inwardly and reached into one of the folds of his cloak for the talisman he’d prepared before leaving Cloud Recesses. It was nothing but a simple transportation spell, to take him back in a hurry if his condition worsened and his weakened core couldn’t carry him away. A few quick adjustments in the brushwork would send this creature not to the Jingshi but somewhere that he would be cared for and, hopefully, taken to a home. That is, if Lan Jingyi didn’t decide to try keeping him. 

“Come here,” he said, pleasantly surprised when the dog approached, trying to peer at the talisman he held as if he understood what it was. 

“I’m sending you to Cloud Recesses. Lan Jingyi,” he added, apropos of nothing. “No barking. No running. Be a good dog.”

The dog titled its head on the side, waiting patiently as Lan Wangji tried to use the leather cord to tie the talisman around its neck. 

“Go.” Lan Wangji said when it was done, and activated the talisman.

The dog disappeared in a flash of spiritual energy that almost knocked Lan Wangji off his feet, which was a sharp reminder of his current state. 

What he’d done was inadvisable. But a small cause of chaos would distract from his absence. And Lan Jingyi tended to worry, too loyal to Lan Wangji for his own good. That would keep him occupied for at least a couple of days, giving Lan Wangji time to put some miles between him and his loud, nosy, protective disciple. 

Dealing with the dog had taken precious time, and the hour was drawing late. Lan Wangji considered pressing onwards, to get himself somewhere warm and dry for the night, but the cold and his body soon conspired to prove that impossible. He looked around for a cave or something like it, for any kind of protection against the cold. 

He was close to losing hope when he saw it in the distance, like a dark and ugly growth on the back of the mountain. 

The Yiling Patriarch’s castle was rumbling and bumping slowly up the slope, heading towards Lan Wangji. He stood his ground, Bichen in hand. Everyone knew about the Yiling Patriarch, Wizard in the Waste: the man who profaned cultivation just by existing, who practiced wicked magic as easily as breathing. Unholy and heartless and  _ hollow _ . Lan Wangji had never met him, but reports of his deeds reached Gusu almost daily, painting him in harsh, unforgiving lines; chaotic and disruptive at best, unspeakably evil at worst. 

Lan Wangji did not stop to think before drawing Bichen and stepping forward. He did not know what the Yiling Patriarch was after in Gusu but it couldn’t be a coincidence that his castle would appear just after Lan Wangji was cursed: when Lan Xichen was away in Lanling assisting the Jins with looking for their missing heir, when Gusu was weak. Lan Wangji widened his stance and planted his heels into the soil of the Gusu mountain. The castle rumbled its way towards him only to stop a few feet away, settling down into the earth and looking, for all intents and purposes, like it had always been there. 

A figure stepped out of the door, tall and lean and holding a dizi so black that it stood out even in the half light: a shadow darker than everything around it, devouring light like a black hole. Lan Wangji willed his hunched shoulders to straighten, his arms to keep steady, and held Bichen poised to strike. 

“What on earth are you doing, Grandfather?” asked Wei Wuxian, and Lan Wangji moved before his body failed him, aiming a strike at the demonic cultivator’s heart. 

Wei Wuxian parried easily, moving his dizi over his heart to block Lan Wangji’s attack like he’d trained for it, like that was a normal way to use a musical instrument and not yet another betrayal of the natural order of things. 

“You won’t find anything there,” Wei Wuxian said, unreasonably. 

Lan Wangji tried to strike again and missed when Wei Wuxian jumped up and out of the path of his sword. 

Wei Wuxian brought his dizi to his lips and a thick black smoke erupted from the instrument. 

“I don’t want to hurt you, Grandfather,” Wei Wuxian said as Lan Wangji slashed blindly at the dark smoke surrounding him. “But I will have to if you keep attacking me and mine.” 

A tendril of smoke struck at Lan Wangji’s chest before he could answer, and he fell. The last thing he felt before he lost consciousness was a pair of strong arms wrapping around him, catching him before he hit the ground. 


End file.
